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Chickpeas 4 Ways from Everyday Food

I’m a huge fan of chickpeas. I love them all different ways, but I can only eat them heated up or room temperature. I don’t like them cold. But, mix them with whatever and I’ll eat it.

My mother first tried to introduce them to my mouth when I was a small kid. I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember be quite resistant based on the look of the odd beige balls she got from a tin. She was eating them straight from the can. I mean, I couldn’t even… I just stared at her in disbelief and disgust.

Growing up we were close to a couple of Lebanese families, and I was familiar enough with their food fare to know chickpeas was part of it. And that chickpeas were in hummus. To me, since I have never been able to stomach hummus, chickpeas were clearly the evil culprit. (It wasn’t, it has always been the sesame paste. Odd because I love sesame seeds and sesame oil, but not sesame paste. Still can’t eat it.)

In my defence, I was a kid, and every knows kids are dumb, mistrusting and ignorant when it comes to new foods. “No way, no how!” was my motto them. {forehead smack} Fast forward to when I was living on my own and trying new foods I could eat to help with a medical problem I have. I found chickpeas at the store, in a can, and I had just read they were tasty, easy to digest and good for our health. I was running out of food options, so I threw caution to the wind and bought the smallest can I could find.

I should have bought the biggest can. I loved them immediately when added to a lovely savoury tomato sauce that was stewed for a long while. Today I’ll eat them in the same kind of stew, but with Moroccan or Indian spices. Or in a lovely room temperature salad with red onions and chicken broth. Or on their own smashed up into a homemade hummus (sans sesame paste, of course). Oh, my… {drooling}

If you’ve never had chickpeas, or you have but you’d like more ideas to incorporate them into your weekly cooking rotation, Everyday Food has 4 ways to use and serve chickpeas. They all look so tasty and easy to prepare, I don’t know which one I want to make first!

Ha. If only my mother and childhood friends could read these words. 🙂

PS: I found my iFone. It was in place neither of us thought to look until today. I found it under a bookcase. My theory is it slid off the leather work chair, fell between the seat and back rest, hit the plush carpet on the smooth plastic casing side, and then slid under the metal bookcase where it was so dark, I had to get down on all fours to spot it. Poor baby didn’t even turn on from lack of battery juice. 🙁 Oh, well. It’s safe and sound now, and that’s all that matters, right?